


Something Borrowed and Something Blue

by kira892



Category: Homestuck
Genre: M/M, changeling davesprite, non-sburb AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-10
Updated: 2014-03-10
Packaged: 2018-01-15 05:16:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,525
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1292761
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kira892/pseuds/kira892
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“You. You have...wings on your back Dave.”</p><p>“I'm not Dave. Dave died 15 years ago, I'm just the monster that was left in his place.”</p><p>John snorts, sounding more freaked out than doubtful. “Okay Strider King, can you knock it off now? How much did you get your bro to spend on those prosthe-”</p><p>“I didn't steal that line from any horror novels dude. That's just what my Mom told me. She gets really honest when she's drunk.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Something Borrowed and Something Blue

You hate taking the bus home. Even when you sit on the aisle seat with John by your side, serving as a shield between you and the cold, hard metal of the bus' side. In some ways its worse than being forced to hitch a ride in bro's car. Because even if the metal in the sturdy old pick up cages you in much much more than the vandalized gum-pocked sheets of sickly yellow metal of the school buses, at least in bro's car, there wouldn't be anyone staring, no hushed, perturbed whispers not quite low enough to go unheard.

 

“Almost there.” John murmurs, giving your hand a firm squeeze. His guilt is still so palpable, you can almost taste it. You nudge his shoulder with yours, as if it would get him to stop radiating his kicked puppy demeanor at you. “You better hope this piece of trash moves faster because I'm almost beyond caring if I regurgitate the pizza you bought me earlier all over your lap.”

 

He doesn't say anything, just strokes the sharp bumps of your knuckles with his thumb. One side of his mouth lifts up ever so slightly and the cut on his lip looks awful still, raw and red and shiny with blood. It's a sore looking blemish at the corner of his mouth, made even more gaudy by the blotches of gray, yellow and purple crowding the skin that marked the border between his lip and the skin of his face.

 

Anger swells in your chest at the sight of it and instinctively, your hand clutches his tighter, your fingers turning into curved talons in between his. The action rubs the fresh burns etched into your finger tips against the smooth skin on the back of John's hand and he frowns, blue eyes downcast, like every single pair of eyes in the bus, except you know his won't secretly watch you when you look away.

 

You can't really blame them. The two of you must be quite the candidates for staring; the disheveled looking boy who got beat up behind the dumpster during sixth period, with his bruised mouth, blood crusted nostrils and broken glasses and you, the weirdo that everyone is afraid of, the one who charged into the fray and got burns on his hands from using a steel cafeteria tray to bash the attackers' faces in.

 

Both of you have telltale signs of getting into a fight, small but visible in many various places on your persons. A scratch here, a bruise there. Your shirt is torn from where you were shoved to the ground and you caught a door frame on the way down and one arm of John's glasses is crooked from when it flew off his face and was stepped on during the commotion. They are all flashing neon targets for stares and they do their job well.

 

'Almost there' feels like an eternity and once it finally ends, you can't get off the bus fast enough. John has to catch you before you trip and bash your face on the sidewalk. Once he's sure both of your feet are planted safely on the ground, he gingerly climbs down the bus steps, careful of sore ribs and a protesting ankle. Every eye on the bus follows every limping step he takes as he grabs your hand and begins to make his way down the street and you glare at them until they avert their gazes.

 

His house is empty when the two of you get there, which John seems to have expected, limping with ease through the door and tossing his backpack onto the couch. “Jane is spending the night at her friend's dorm and dad won't be back until 9 at least.” He explains. “Or not...Do you think the school called him?” John muses, worried.

 

“No one saw anything. No one but you, me, all the dickheads involved and people who could care less.” You say flopping down on the couch and tugging John down with you. He hisses a little when he lands on the cushions and you frown, watching intently as John reaches down and rubs his ankle.

 

“Did you sprain it?” you ask.

 

He shakes his head. “Probably just pulled a tendon. It should be fine by tomorrow.” John mutters, leaning back on the couch with a loud groan.

 

“You want me to go get ice for it?”

 

John snorts. “The fridge is stainless steel Dave.”

 

“Yeah and you have 25 different pairs of oven mitts hanging all over the kitchen, did you know you can use those to keep yourself from touching shit that can hurt you?, shocking I know, I'll give you a few minutes to let it sink in.”

 

He rolls his eyes and makes it a point to slam himself into your shoulder when he tilts sideways to lean into you.

 

“Why'd those douchebags attack you anyway? Didn't they get the memo that bullying dorks with buck teeth and glasses was so 27 years ago?” John just laughs, sliding his fingers up the inside of your forearm, the marred skin of your palm and wedges them in between yours. He brings your hand to his lips and kisses it.

 

“Homophobia is still in though apparently.”

 

So it's all your fault. Ah.

 

You grip his hand tighter and as if John can hear you thinking, he nudges your shoulder pointedly with his and gives you a kiss on the cheek.

 

“Whoops.” he says after he pulls away. “got blood on you.” He swipes at your cheek with his fingers and pokes at the cut on his lip, 'tsk'-ing when his finger comes away bloody. He taps you on the shoulder.

 

“Help me get to the bathroom, I need to wash up and change.”

 

You help him upstairs to his room and after collecting some fresh clothes and telling you to help yourself to his shirts if you'd like to change out of yours, John disappears into his bathroom to wash up. You make a mess of his shirt drawer looking for something you deem worthy enough for wearing and end up with an orange tee with Kenny McCormick's face printed on the chest. You make it a point to face the mirror on the back of his door before you strip off your ruined shirt to pull on his and you pause, staring at yourself standing in the middle of John's room with his shirt tangled around your arms.

 

A quiet sigh slips out of your throat. You remember the day when you finally worked up enough guts or enough insanity to tell him, that Dave Strider didn't exist and that he hasn't existed for 15 years, not after you stole his life.

 

“ _Uhh is there really something you need to show me? Or are you just going to stand there, staring at your own reflection like a total douche?”_

 

_You glare at the reflection of his face over your shoulder, mouth twisting down into a nervous frown. “Shhh, don't kill it Egbert, I'm about to do my big reveal, gotta build up the tension it deserves.”_

 

John just rolled his eyes at you and told you he really didn't get what you were trying to do, half convinced that you'd been planning some sort of stupid ass prank ever since you told him two days earlier that you're not like him, or anyone else for that matter and that your name isn't really Dave Strider, or rather Dave Strider is a name that isn't really _yours_.

 

There was still part of him that knew though, that you weren't just pulling off some ironic joke or whatever the fuck that only you would get the humor of. You saw it in his face, the knowledge that all the old people didn't draw their curtains every time you walked by for no reason, that everyone in the town didn't whisper about you just because you looked a little too pale to be normal and your “extreme allergy” to any form of metal is probably the only case ever documented in the history of forever.

 

So before he could say anything else, you hurriedly mumbled something about preparing himself and yanked your shirt off before you could lose your nerve.

 

Slowly, you push your shades up until they were resting on your head. In the dim afternoon light, your eyes look almost normal, more brown than freakish, bright amber. You're still just a little too pale but at least Albinism is an excuse you can use to pass yourself off as only slightly strange.

 

Or at least strange in a still human sense.

 

You stand very still, listening to the sounds of the house, senses on high alert, paranoid that someone could walk in any minute even knowing no one would. After what feels like 10 minutes of it, you turn, back facing the mirror. You examine your back, eyes narrowed into disgusted slits as they rove over every inch of the withered, ugly freak show mounted on your back.

 

_His stunned silence makes your skin prickle anxiously, the longer it stretched on, the more terrified you got. However you suppose that his silence is a hell of a lot more welcome than enraged, disgusted, fearful screaming. Which might still come about if you don't handle this carefully._

 

“ _Umm...uh...D-...what is...erm...what happened to your back?”_

 

“ _Maybe I was born with it, maybe it's Maybelline.”_

 

“ _You. You have..._ wings _on your back Dave.”_

 

“ _I'm not Dave. Dave died 15 years ago, I'm just the monster that was left in his place.”_

 

_John snorts, sounding more freaked out than doubtful. “Okay Strider King, can you knock it off now? How much did you get your bro to spend on those prosthe-”_

 

“ _I didn't steal that line from any horror novels dude. That's just what my Mom told me. She gets really honest when she's drunk.”_

 

John steps back into the room and you jump when you see him emerge in the corner of your eye. He pauses, just as surprised as you are. He can see your back in full display on his mirror, you know he can but he doesn't say a peep about it.

 

“I found some burn cream in my medicine cabinet. How are your hands?”

 

“They're okay, they don't really hurt that bad.”

 

John nods and for a second you're fully convinced he's just going to totally ignore the deformity hanging out in the open and put on full display on his mirror. Needless to say, you're more than a little taken aback when he steps forward and reaches behind you, laying his palm flat on your back and sliding it up until his finger tips were touching the shriveled edge of what could have been a bird wing you suppose, if fairies or whatever the fuck _you_ are, were the magical, beautiful kind of mythical creature, not fucked up little gremlins who stole babies from cribs and replaced them with shitty, damaged copies like you.

 

“You used to have feathers.” John murmurs, staring at your back through the mirror. His eyes look like they were years away as he reaches up a bit more to brush at the wrinkled skin hanging off the stunted, crooked bone protruding from your back.

 

“No I didn't.”

 

“Yes you did, they were orange. Did you pluck them? What the hell Dave?”

 

“They were patchy and weird, trust me, this mark of beauty on my back looks way better without it. Besides, being the next exhibit in the town museum isn't exactly on my bucket list. Loathe as I am to pass up the opportunity to spread my literal, abnormal wings, I'm sure preening while disgusted tourists an excited freaks took pictures of my stuffed carcass would get boring after a while.”

 

“You can't preen when you're dead dumbass.”

 

“Rosalia Lombardo would be offended by that statement John, you ignorant slut.”

 

He pinches your nipple as a retort and you yelp, swatting at his shoulder. Something snippy is about to come out of your mouth when John casually reaches up with his other hand and traces the ugly, scarred stub on your other side, where your other thing that could've been a wing should be. The words spectacularly die in your mouth.

 

_John goes very silent after that and he stays very silent for so long that it makes something just break inside you. Regret, and crippling fear turn your insides into wobbly, mushy paste and before you can help yourself, you were talking and talking and talking til you had absolutely no clue what you were even trying to do anymore._

 

_And then John reaches up and touches it. Touches you._

 

“ _What happened to this?”_

 

_He was asking about your amputated sixth limb, which stands out because of how much uglier it is, disproportionate and scarred._

 

“ _Tried to cut it off.”_

 

“ _Tried?”_

 

“ _I cut it off. Lucky Rose heard my screams of agony and got mom sober enough to give me medical attention before I bled to death.”_

 

“ _Dav...” He falters as if remembering that Dave isn't your name. It's the whole point of you doing this but still, your stupid heart sinks to hear him hesitate._

 

“ _Dave.” John says, much more firmly, blue eyes shining crowded with too many emotions at once. “Dave, Jesus,”. You're not sure what he was going to do. Hit you, yell at you, tell you to get the hell out and never talk to him again were all pretty viable options._

 

 _And John,being the stupid,_ beautiful _bastard that he is, does none of those perfectly sensible things for him to do and pulls you into a bone crushing hug instead._

 

Gently, John takes hold of your forearm and urges you to turn around. You do so, silent and curious. The first thing John does is lift your shades away from your head. You don't understand it and you're left not caring when he leans forward and presses a kiss to the back of your neck. He makes a trail of them down your back, to the point on your flesh where your wings meet. He presses a kiss to it once, twice before moving over to the sawed off stump on one side and tenderly lays aline of kisses starting from the stump until he's back where he started on your neck.

 

“What are you doing?”

 

He presses himself against your back and you feel him shrug before his arms come up to hug you just under your chest. “Dunno man.”

 

“Cool.”

 

The two of you just stand there for a few minutes, with John's arms around you and his chest to your back. His skin is warm on yours even through the layer of his shirt, his heartbeat slow and lovely and human on the part of you that was most _not_.

 

“In case I forgot to say it before, thanks for saving my ass.”

 

“You did forget to say it before, I'm hurt John. Bad Egbert, worst boyfriend.”

 

John blows a raspberry into your shoulder. You swat him on the head.

 

“You're welcome.”

 


End file.
